


honey glow

by catarinquar



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s07e02 The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati, F/M, Fluff, Telepathy, have you ever felt loved?, mulder & scully and beach house...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 08:15:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18007172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catarinquar/pseuds/catarinquar
Summary: “I was so scared, Mulder,” she whispers. She’s been drawing patterns on his face for the past hour, trying to get him to sleep—pretending it isn’t her own eyes that keep slipping shut. “That you would be trapped inside your own head forever. That I was too late and that I’d never get you back.”-post-amor fati. scully's mind is a beautiful place.





	honey glow

**Author's Note:**

> in answer to prompts from @wtfmulder and anon on tumblr (the way you said "i love you", 25: in a blissful sigh as you fall asleep & 29: slowly, the words dripping from your tongue like honey)

She came back bringing Italian and flannel pajamas, fed him his medicine and changed his bandage before crawling into bed with him. _I’m going to make sure you rest,_ she’d said, _even if I have to stay all night._ Now the low light from the streetlamps outside seeps through the cracks in his bedroom blinds to cast the room in a lemon glow.

“I was so scared, Mulder,” she whispers. She’s been drawing patterns on his face for the past hour, trying to get him to sleep—pretending it isn’t her own eyes that keep slipping shut. Wide-awake, he wonders at that; how tired she must be. “That you would be trapped inside your own head forever. That I was too late and that I’d never get you back.”

Rolling to his side gets him an inch closer. “I saw you, Scully,” he tells her. Her or the cinnamon dust sprinkled across her cheekbones, hiding constellations of their own. “I could see you.”

There’s a word, clinging to his mind even as he feels hers drift still further away. _Golden._ It’s unsatisfactory, wholly inadequate: Scully is a prism of seven dimensions at _least,_ and on only the secondary refraction she splits his world into a clean spectrum that runs from cream through amber.

And she furrows her brow, thumb falling still against his temple. As if he’s projecting, as if she doesn’t like the implication that she’s been bending the laws of physics since first entering the basement office. _Well, Scully,_ he wants to tell her, _you rewrote Einstein for the hell of it._ Or, _well, Scully, the celestial sphere is trapped under your skin_ — _what did you think?_

She starts again; fingers skimming his orbital arch. When her palm passes in front of his eye, he misses her face. She moves down to his cheekbone but closes her own eyes and then he misses them, too. “What did you see?” she finally asks.

Two weeks ago, he could see further, deeper. Two weeks ago, she began at ivory and ended at auburn, a thousand sunsets and deep embers caught in between. Scorching like the white-hot sand, not to be looked directly upon. Although that’s disappearing now, he can still feel the warmth. He’s been thinking of it as residual sunshine, the way it wraps itself around him, but—maybe that’s not what it is.

He saw her on the beach; saw the way she’d left him to search for him, for some way to save him. Saw the letters she wrote, _your beautiful mind_ —“Scully, you were beautiful.” She bites her lip and places her thumb over his again, but he protests—“hmn-no, you don’t understand”—and her hand trails down to his chest while he moves to cup her face. “I _saw_ you, Scully, and you are _so_ beautiful. In here, see?”

Her eyes slip shut again as if she has decided to indulge him, and she shifts closer. Spreads her palm over his heart, burns him fever-hot. He waits. “Hmm… tell me.”

But it is as if in falling asleep, she is disappearing at last. Or, no; it is Mulder himself who is—coming back. Still, he plays connect-the-dots, maps out those constellations in case he never gets to see them again. “I could see… your mind, Scully. The colours…” _golden,_ but it still doesn’t come close to capturing her. “I could feel, I _can_ feel—”

_Her,_  slipping through his fingers like mellow honey until all that is left is her breath, warm against his throat. “Mull’er…” she sighs, and he realises—all along, it’s been this: “… ‘love you.”

**Author's Note:**

> say hi on [tumblr](https://catarinquar.tumblr.com)!


End file.
